Billion $$$ Babes: The Ecclestone Heiresses Live it Up

Billion $$$ Babes: The Ecclestone Heiresses Live it Up

Paparazzi from the notorious agency Bauer-Griffin, dubbed "the Hollywood Hunt Club" for capturing famed quarry like Angelina Jolie and Pippa Middleton, are snapping away as two girls, a blonde and a brunette wearing leggings and sneakers, duck into a newsstand along a sleepy Chelsea side street in London. Nobody else looks twice at the dressed-down pair, whose faces have never appeared anywhere near a movie billboard or a royal balcony. They emerge from the store clutching gossip rags and candy, and the camera shutters start to whir. The only clue that the paparazzi haven't made a mistake pouncing on this mundane outing is the duo's matching shiny black crocodile Hermès Birkin bags — a combined $80,000 or so casually dangling from their arms.

The reason for the Hollywood-level attention is that this is Tamara Ecclestone and her younger sister, Petra Stunt, who, as the daughters of Formula One's billionaire president and CEO, Bernie Ecclestone, and his ex-wife Croatian model Slavica Ecclestone, can buy any Tinseltown star many times over. They've already done just that: Petra, 23, is now known in the U.S. as the proud new owner of Aaron and Candy Spelling's $85 million, 123-room house, which she bought in June 2011 and had redone in an unthinkable three months ("I move quickly in life," she says). And in London, Tamara, 28, has made an equally impressive investment with a $70 million stately brick mansion on a gated street (opposite the residence of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge) that she is also renovating; an at-home hair salon is one of her additions.

As a result, helped by their tawny tans and taste for glitzy minidresses, the sisters have found that their every move — from red-carpet appearances at the amfAR gala in Cannes to being dropped off at lunch by their drivers — is catalogued by the press. "The New First Family of Real Estate" was how The Wall Street Journal heralded their splurges. "I didn't realize that buying that house was going to create such attention," says a wide-eyed Petra about purchasing the Spelling megamansion, known as the Manor — a replica French château once famed for its gift-wrapping room — where she now lives with her husband, private investor James Stunt. (The two, who met on a blind date when Petra was 18, were married last year in a $18.75 million wedding at Italy's Odescalchi Castle, site of the TomKat nuptials.) "There are lots of people richer than us in the world buying that kind of property," she says. In fact, there are only 417 people richer than Ecclestone père, according to the Forbes World's Billionaires list, which estimates the 81-year-old British magnate's wealth at $2.8 billion.

When it comes to Tamara's mansion on Kensington Palace Gardens, the brunette sister says, "I guess maybe it caused a stir in the press because of where my house is and the size of it, and maybe because of our ages." She and Petra sit munching on bowls of candy in the living room of Tamara's current home, a London town house done up as the ultimate girly pad: There's a pool, a room for her tanning bed, a screening room, a wood-paneled closet lined with racks of Balmain, Hervé Léger, and Azzedine Alaïa, and a glass-windowed Birkin-arium displaying her collection of 20-odd of the coveted bags. Bedazzled portraits of Jay-Z and Marilyn Monroe overlook the staircase, and in the driveway sit a Ferrari and a white Bentley. A security guard and a personal assistant work in an office crammed with Louboutin boxes while a chef prepares an afternoon snack in the kitchen. (But no caffeine for Petra, who also rarely drinks alcohol: "Coffee makes me hungry.")

Such a cushioned lifestyle, documented in Tamara's reality show, Billion $$ Girl, which debuted in Britain last year, has prompted some to call the pair "the new Hilton sisters" (and in fact, Paris Hilton's father, Rick, was Petra's co-broker). But ask them how they feel about the comparison and Petra is quick to retort, "It's just easy to say because they are also two sisters, one blonde and one brunette." Tamara adds, "That's just lazy journalism. The only thing I guess you could say is that we are all heiresses."

Yet for all the trappings of wealth, the two siblings seem as regular as they profess. They are simply living in a world where the scale of their financial map is massively skewed: Every dollar is $1,000. "Like, the house that I grew up in had a garden, and my new house has a garden," a guileless Tamara says of her Edenic existence. Petra's favorite store is the high-fashion chain Intermix, though she admits to cleaning out the Céline store of python handbags while in London. And they are unusually polite to their staff; the only people they boss around are each other ("C'mon, bitch," is one endearment from Tamara to her sister).

So it's hard to entirely blame them when they profess to being puzzled by the public's fascination. "I don't get it 'cause, like, everyone knows we're really privileged, we're wealthy. There's so much more to us," Petra says. She would like people to focus on her fledgling handbag line, Stark, which features structured clutches and bags in exotic skins and Swarovski crystals. She heads to the offices daily, where she takes appointments alongside her four employees. "I want it to be small, and walk before I can run," she explains. But while the company is close to her Los Angeles home, a five-minute car ride, Petra hasn't dared to tackle the trip herself: "That's the only thing I really miss about London. I can't drive in L.A.; I don't feel confident enough."

"I feel like one of the reasons Petra moved from London is that the press here is very negative, and there's a lot of envy," says Tamara, who is evidently saddened to have lost her partner in crime. "I don't want to moan about paparazzi because I know you can't have your cake and eat it too, but we used to feel like we had to justify everything. I do have a nice life, but that's not all I do. I'm not defending it anymore. I raise millions of pounds for charity, I had a successful reality show that aired all over Europe, and I'm launching a hair-care brand in November." (The 11-product line was started because "not every woman has time to go to a salon and have her hair blow-dried every day.")

If anything, "it shows that we don't need to work, but we choose to," offers Petra. "There are other people in the world in the same position as we are who just lie in bed watching TV or go out constantly or whatever."

Their father doesn't always approve of their lavish expenditures, but "he's always said the property we bought is really smart," Petra says. "Maybe he thinks we buy too many handbags, which probably is true. He thinks one is fine."

Bernie Ecclestone, who left school at 16, also wishes that his daughters had graduated from college. Tamara, who completed one year at University College London and another at the London School of Economics, says "it just wasn't for me." "You gave it a real go," her sister says comfortingly. As for Petra, who also opted out ("I just knew I wanted to start a fashion line"), she would love to emulate Jimmy Choo cofounder Tamara Mellon's career. But when she's not working, she says, "I'm the laziest person alive." A favorite activity is watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Mob Wives, and Gossip Girl while snuggling with her five dogs. "I'm a real homebody; I don't like dealing with change. I hate going on holiday."

For Tamara, meanwhile, going on holiday is her favorite thing to do. Preferred locales are the South of France, where she often stays on her father's yacht, or Dubai, where she lodges at the One & Only. "I'm a planner. Last year, I went on holiday with friends, and I laminated the timetable of our restaurant reservations." But by far her favorite is the Bahamas resort Atlantis; she and boyfriend Omar Khyami vacation there regularly. "It's great," Tamara says happily, looking at a photo of the two of them watersliding. "Because he loves gambling and I love tanning."